Vapourware Barkley 2 - the new Codex vaporware champion

[Prime Junta]

I glad the game is still being worked on and will definitely for sure come out one of these Thursdays though.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

SA faggotry is the worst kind of faggotry. Since nobody is going to see any recompense from this, just nuke all the SA faggots from the codex back to their stinkhole of a forum

I thought they were relatively cool and edgy during the Bush years, when cuckservatives had gone full retard and boomers finally started to get on the internet and water it down it for the normie mainstream. When you think about it, SA itself is just a complete abortion in that they had so many things going in their favor, yet they handed over their cultural influence to furries and otaku freaks, and they have never recovered. I'm not sure if they were deliberately infiltrated or not, or if they're just the long term final consequence of edginess without substance.

They were ruined ever since Uwe Boll beat the shit out of Lowtax in a sanctioned boxing match.

 

[LeStryfe79]

I live in poverty, and have spent over $2000 on kickstarter games.

I think I've played 1 hour of D:OS and 30 hours of Grim Dawn and that's it.

I also spent $20,000 on strippers in 2001 and got off a whole 3 times.

On the other hand, I'm not a felon and don't have to pay any child support .

 

[Blaine]

 

[Zep Zepo]

I've been waiting for a good Basket Ball game for a long time. Hope this comes out soon.

Zep--

 

[Prime Junta]

On the other hand, I'm not a felon and don't have to pay any child support .

Does not make sense. If you were a felon you'd just steal the money.

 

[Zombra]

Infinitron It would be nice if the quotes from SA forums were

'd with the names of who you're quoting* - I fear actually going to the site to figure it out.

*Ideally with identifiers like "John Smith - Club Owner" or "Roxy Crenshaw - Proud Boys Spokesperson"

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...quel-to-barkley-shut-up-and-jam/posts/2528443

What's in the Game: Combat

Okay so next update.

Firstly, I want to say that I am beholden to you the backers over the fate of Barkley. I personally want to release the game at some point which is why I’m still working on it. I want to solve both relationships with other team members and also continue to honor the original design and layout of the game. I do, however, think you are all owed something SOON to at least show that this wasn’t a take-the-money-and-run situation. There is a game to be played here, with some holes albeit.

So please leave in the comments if you’d like a demo, I assume most would and hopefully a discussion about that can happen. This would be like a “floor demo,” and you could certainly call it a vertical slice. It would be balanced to the best of my ability with some general information to guide you at the beginning.

Despite what people might think, I don’t have a fundamental issue with also releasing the source code. I want to take the appropriate steps towards doing so first. I think an explanation of the state of the game is justly warranted, and then explanations or videos and demos of what we have done. All that is much more understandable to most backers than just a GM1.4 project, and I think is the more appropriate first steps before dumping everything without backup information. Also, the rest of the team, past and present would need to be consulted.

I think there are 4 topics that should be covered in the coming days. 1 – what’s in the game now, 2 – what’s not in the game, 3 – the history of the development, 4 – the future.

Each one has merits but instead of dropping a wall of screen caps and then a development wish list, I think I’ll try a little mixture of what is in and what is not and maybe how that would influence what can be done in the future. (I’ll save the history for a larger update, as obviously it’s a sensitive subject and I have no interest at all with pointing fingers, nor do I have the right to.)

I’ll cover combat in the game for this post. In a few days: exploration and questing.

NOTE: I fully realize and agree that the story and quests in B2 were a much bigger motivator to funding this game than the combat. I agree that the next post about that topic is going to be more important and consequential. I will immediately start working on that update after this one and put it up soon. It will also confront an issue that I think has been assumed but not accurate: that this game is not the game originally planned. I believe it is.

I can collect and release some design documents about these as well but here is the basic idea illustrated in the Quick Menu:

I’m showing this not to surprise anyone about how COMPLETE the game is, or even prove that “See! Work was done!” I’m just attempting to explain the systems that work in the game currently. This will allow me to better break down what is not in game more clearly below. This Quickmenu is newer and is pretty close to feature complete. It is a bit messy and places like the 6,7 and 8 needing visual sprucing, but it does the job.

As a refresher for the idea of the gameplay, it’s essentially a circular explore-collect-combine mechanic that increases the strength of both the player and the weapons they use. It was claimed before on Kickstarter and other places, but the system is best described as Borderlands meets Shin Megami Tensei. This requires you to collect gun’s, then selectively breed (fuse) them to get the appropriate effects for what you are looking to do.

Okay so now what is in the game: You can run out of ammo, refill ammo, level up, get more gun’s, breed gun’s and explore the world. Naturally aiming and shooting (combat) and losing health/dying is all in the game as well. I’d have been living in the woods by now if those core aspects weren’t working. The game-cycle works, with balance eventually either breaking down or being a little too hard from the start of the game. We just need a lot more TLC on the balance (see below where I talk about playtesting.)

To me, the big thing that is missing, or rather, not that great: Zaubers. They themselves are fine and work, all 5 of them, but they lack the imperative in combat to use them often, or even at all most of the time.

Zaubers (or another type of secondary combat mechanic to replace it), hamper some of the combat feel in the game and is a thing that I personally think should be worked on. There are ideas for what we could do, but essentially that’s what I consider the major combat mechanic that could be worked on and would take time.

Also missing from game in no particular order:

· Zaubers (read above.)

· Improved Quickmenu – alsa stated above. This is just second polished version of the menu.

· Fully Realized Prefix 2s – the second Prefixes in the game are linked to the periodic effect of the gun. I’ve explained it before but it’s kind of like applying status effects like poison or slow ala standard RPGs. They used to be much more complicated, and therefore pretty buggy. Laz reduced their complexity and then they were further reduced by GZ. They are fine now but could be helped by shaving the number down (done through the genetic breeding system). Right now, there is space for a whopping 60 of them, admittedly too many. There is some happy medium between interesting effects and doable amount.

· Suffixes – same story with suffixes but there are less of these and they are all kind of just joke’s. What we have can stay the same with what we have but deserve some polish for sure.

· More dumb enemies. We have some that are robust intelligent baddies, and others that are kind of dumb and simple. We have plenty of the complicated enemies and need a few more simple enemies to round out the game and make areas feel uniform in population. As an example, the Swamps have about 5 dynamic enemy types, whereas the Mountain Pass only really has one.

· Equipment and Candy – the systems for developing these and adding them to the game are totally in. You can buy them and equip them. There aren’t a lot of variations of Equipment yet, the game is missing my guess 5-or-so types of equipment and a bunch of candy. Most of this is just dependent on further combat balancing.

· Boss(es) – this is an interesting topic because the game has a few and only TRULY needs one more: The Final Boss. The first boss in the game is a giant catfish that is playable but is missing some gorgeous sprite animations that Frankie drew for it but haven’t been hooked up yet. There is another humanoid miniboss, and big crab thing, and a bullet hell boss in Brain City that also function but some need a little sprite love. The plan was always to just get to the final boss as soon as possible once issues with animation and AI were ironed out or accepted. Speaking of, AI and Animation code has always been in a feasible-but-really-hard-to-work-with status and we’d be benefitted by a rebuild. That of course, would be a much larger undertaking and was always just a footnote during our discussions on how to make more bosses. There are also other prototypes of bosses that have been sitting around and could get a treatment into the game but are certainly not considered “required.”

· Balance – the game is unbalanced, as anyone might expect. The game assuredly needs playtesting. The reason we didn’t playtest besides at conventions for the first 3 years is that the combat was simply broken, and if 95% of your testing base comes back with the same complaint that “enemies and gun’s don’t work” then it’s kind of redundant. We have had play-test worthy combat for 2 years now: once the Gun’s breeding was kind of locked in, and especially with the introduction of the new quickmenu this year. The reason for not getting playtesters since that time is simply the same reason for not updating: It was a mistake and I was always waiting on that big success story to roll up (as covered in last update).

I cut out some explanations of design and game-intent kind of stuff because currently I just want to highlight the raw count of what is in and what is not. Is this list complete? Certainly not, but these are the big issues in my mind, and I hope would be shared with most who had worked on the game in recent times.

The TIME it takes to finish these tasks and enhancements is a dilemma that has plagued development from the beginning. The answer is always “not really a lot of time IF there is constant work, constant communication, and a little bit of luck.” So, I would not hazard a number to quantify the work the game needs. Again, my goal is not to convince you this can still be done right now, it’s just to enumerate the success and failures of development so far.

That said, and in conclusion: regardless of what happens to Barkley 2 in this form, I’m still going to work on it. I’m still going to try to bring the original vision of the game to life, but I don’t consider this some type of hostage situation where I am dangling a broken game over the masses. You have all been extraordinarily patient about these things, and I am always blown away by the constructive feedback, negative and positive from the backers. Whether or not I am working on the game with the team that I so dearly miss and wish that we could reconstruct our friendships or not, I’m just going to dump as much of my feelings and outlook into these updates in the coming days. I appreciate everyone reading, and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Give me a moment and I’ll start replying to direct messages to me as well. Apologies for the delay on that since Sunday.

Thank you,

Liam

 

[Iri]

We all know there's only ONE person who could finish this game.....

 

[Hobo Elf]

We essentially paid 120k dollars to ruin the friendship of a group of people.

 

[Murk]

Figures, a woman could do that for free and in 1/1024th* the time.

*This unit of measurement should be called a "Warren".

 

[Higher Game]

I would play it just for the memes and art, even if the combat were as pointless as Dragon Warrior or those idle flash "games". If meaningless grind can work for a jRPG (you know, like the original Barkley lolz) then even shit combat mechanics can serve as filler for a D-list, but finished game. It would win lots of participation trophies!

 

[Zombra]

Although their suckiness clearly wasn't intended, I enjoyed seeing enemies like the Weresnails and Kobolds. Not every enemy has to be an exciting new challenge and a lack of activity can be an interesting surprise sometimes. An enemy that just kinda turns its back and shuffles away from you? Frickin hilarious ... and can even synergize provocatively with other enemies; cf. Binding of Isaac.

 

[Blaine]

 

[Latro]

I totally forgot this was a thing, should have remained as an obscure freeware rpgmaker game

i was expecting barkely 2 to just be barkley 1 with original assets, no idea why they felt the need to stuff it with mechanics. if they wanted open world, they could have just done a SaGa copy-cat.

 

[Higher Game]

It still might come out, guys. Once the egotistical original team finishes the groundwork and moves on, Indian H1B coders can be brought in to fill in the details without any drama. Proven model. It worked for Duke Nukem Forever!

 

[Latro]

I think the problem is that their combat wasn't fun, even if you used the most regular sort of guns. And the reason it wasn't fun is that they invested all their time into this insane gun customization system instead of starting out by nailing down the fundamentals of a good combat engine.

they already kinda had that with a basic RPG system. I would have liked to see something SaGa-like with FFV job system or something.

 

[Zombra]

It's not like challenging combat was the reason anyone liked Barkley 1. Not that I fault them for wanting to make a game that was actually good, but failing that shouldn't really have stopped them.

 

[LeStryfe79]

I just figured out this is actually season 6 of The Wire.

 

[buffalo bill]

Still less disappointing than nu-Torment.

 

[mindfields]

That's why the game had at one point eight damage types and a complex elemental resistance system that never really worked well in practice meaning mostly you just considered normal damage and ignored the rest

Lolwut, from memory even Wizardry 8 only had 6 kinds of elemental resistances, what a shitshow.

 

[LeStryfe79]

Honestly, my car broke down and I started dumpster diving for food. I got Blackmoor 2 on my phone though. A great game. My life is also great. I'm so thankful every day that I can breath air and post here. I have it good.

 

[lightbane]

*whiny rants*

That's very interesting and all but... Where's my money? I want it back.

Didn't Kickstarter have a policy to make refunds if the project failed?

 

[Grauken]

Didn't Kickstarter have a policy to make refunds if the project failed?

They don't

https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-...obligated-to-do-once-their-project-is-funded-

 

[Baron Dupek]

That's why the game had at one point eight damage types and a complex elemental resistance system that never really worked well in practice meaning mostly you just considered normal damage and ignored the rest

ah yes, Beyond Divinity with all these resistances just for the spit